By Myrra Arya

Published on 3/26/2024

last night I stole a date

to hold the wrinkled deep burgundy

into the baby’s wailing red balloon of a mouth

growing smaller and more deflated every day

I couldn't find milk-

they’d taken all the cows.

the officer who caught me was the short one

No, not the one with the mustache;

the blue-eyes.

Thief he said

Thief they all said

Thief thief thief no morals you people worse than pigs breeding like rats

that’ll show you this is what happens to a thief

again and

again and

again

you took my farmland to farm cotton

like we could eat the spun white fiber

stuff it down the esophagus till the neck explodes in fluff

thief

my milky cows to feed your own pale babies

while my son screams and his skin-

the color of his ancestral soil

grows taut against his little ribs.

you make country clubs on the land where

once I took a girl under the peepal tree and we shared a mango

and I kissed the juice off her chin.

you say no Indians and dogs allowed

as if our dogs, our pariahs, would go anywhere near

your weak splotchy skin and yellow teeth

and blue eyes the color of mold.

and as you leave me here

the blood blooms on my shirt like a bougainvillea flower

in my grandmother’s silver hair.

thief thief thief

but I lay my cheek down on the comforting red dust

I would play cricket on as a child

and I think-

if god were to judge us for the size of our stolen goods

my hell would be the heat of a temple candle,

and yours the sun.